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Outspoken Scientist Offers a Different Perspective on Plastics
By Kate Bertrand Connolly 1 , Freelance Writer
Big water is talking back to plastic naysayers through the International Bottled Water Association’s “H2O In The Know” podcast, which recently featured an interview with outspoken plastic materials scientist Chris DeArmitt .
DeArmitt is a PhD chemist; fellow and charter chemist of the Royal Society of Chemistry; a fellow of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining; and founder of Phantom Plastics, a polymers and plastics consultancy. DeArmitt speaks widely on plastics and the environment.
Introducing DeArmitt to the podcast audience, host Chris Torres described him as being “on a mission to debunk current myths and misunderstandings about the impact that plastic has on the environment.”
Torres went on to ask DeArmitt for his take on plastic materials and packaging and their effect on the environment.
“If we compare plastics to other materials, we find that they're the greenest packaging solution in 93% of cases studied,” DeArmitt said. “So, in almost every case, replacing them means vastly more greenhouse gas. I'm talking three times more greenhouse gas, about four times more waste, and double the fossil fuel used if you want to go to paper or metal or glass.”
DeArmitt added, “Plastic certainly does have an impact, but it's a very small impact.” Focusing on food packaging, he added that “food is incredibly bad for the environment,” based on the resources required to produce it. For “a typical piece of packaged food, 3% of the impact of that is the plastic packaging, and the rest of it is the food and the transportation.”
Additionally, “When you do the math, you find out that because that plastic packaging is able to stop the food from spoiling and protect it during transportation, you end up saving five to 10 times more [carbon dioxide]," he said.
Microplastics, recycling, and litter.
Torres also asked his guest if microplastics and nanoparticles pose a threat to human health .
“I've yet to see a single peer-reviewed, credible study that showed any harm from microplastics,” DeArmitt replied, adding that there’s a disconnect between what scientists say on the subject and what the media reports.
Meanwhile, his response to a question about recycling took a global turn: “Everyone's obsessing over these low recycling rates in America, which are maybe nine to 10%. In Europe, it's like 45 to 50%, even higher. So there's no fundamental reason why we can't have more recycling…[we] need to put in infrastructure and incentives to make that happen.”
DeArmitt also shared his opinions on plastic pollution, reframing it as litter caused by consumers rather than pollution caused by industry. Rather than placing the blame on brand owners and other companies, he supports solutions that target litterers, such as consumer education, fines, and deposit schemes — solutions that aim to modify consumer behavior.
DeArmitt did not cite scientific references for the data and findings he discussed during the podcast. However, DeArmitt does cite references in his book “The Plastics Paradox ,” which is based on more than 400 scientific articles. DeArmitt also authored the book “Innovation Abyss: An Innovator's Solutions to Corporate Innovation Failure” published in 2016 and available at Amazon and elsewhere.
You can watch the full 21-minute podcast here:
Talent Talk: The Beginning of a Plastics Upturn
My company just completed its fifth NPE show, so I want to use this week’s Talent Talk to share our observations. KLA is a recruiting firm working only within plastics manufacturing. That means most of the exhibitors and attendees at NPE would fall within our client or candidate space.
Since what I am going to relate here is based on hundreds of conversations over the course of the week, it is closer to observational evidence than anecdotal, but to be clear it is not a scientific survey. With that said, I am seeing clear signs pointing to where we are in the business cycle.
Overall economy vs. manufacturing.
In oversimplified terms, economies have four phases: Expansion, peak, contraction, and trough. Most of the data you will see in the newspapers, the nightly news, or online is for the overall US economy, which includes education, hospitality, government, agriculture, information technology, and so much more. Our focus is on the manufacturing sector, which comprises around 12% of US GDP.
We have demonstrated in previous Talent Talk columns that the manufacturing sector has been in the contraction/trough phases for around two years. One measure we follow closely has indicated that 17 of the past 18 months were in contraction (that measure has just two categories —?expansion and contraction).
Conversations point to an expansion phase.
Going back to the many conversations we had during NPE, I believe the plastics industry is ready to enter an expansion phase because of all the companies who approached us with sales needs. That makes a lot of sense in an early recovery phase.
Companies have excess capacity, so the first step is to sell that. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, plastics material and resin industrial capacity has increased about 12% over the past four years, but capacity utilization for that same category has remained soft. The latest reading was around 81% of available capacity.
Headwinds remain.
Sticky inflation and stubbornly high interest rates will remain as headwinds, but with available capacity in the industry, there is potential for healthy gains without big capital investments, which would come later in the cycle.
Recycling Reusable Shopping Bags
By Kate Bertrand Connolly 1 , Freelance Writer
Recycling single-use plastic bags is old news to consumers and retailers using store drop-off for high- and low-density polyethylene (HDPE and LDPE) bags and PE films, but we haven’t heard much about recycling reusable shopping bags — until now.
A new take-back service from Returnity Innovations, called “In Rotation”, addresses the glut of reusable bags in the marketplace and enables consumers to recycle those bags. The service accepts many types of reusable bags, even if they’re damaged.
On the accepted list are the reusable plastic shopping bags supermarkets and other retailers use to pack consumers’ purchases. Also accepted are nonwoven plastic bags, promotional bags from trade shows and other events, and woven cloth bags. However, single-use plastic bags, drawstring bags, backpacks, and luggage are not accepted.
Returnity’s goal is to keep reusable bags in active use and reduce reliance on single-use plastics. The scale of the issue is significant: The company claims that approximately 10 billion reusable bags were produced in 2023.
"Reusable bags seemed like an ideal solution to the single-use bag problem, but their widespread adoption only created a different waste issue. In Rotation aims to balance the scales by empowering consumers and retailers to actively participate in circularity," said Mike Newman, CEO of Returnity, in the launch announcement.
Newman’s inspiration for In Rotation came from the successful cell phone take-back programs he created for brands such as Walmart, AT&T, and Verizon.
Return and reuse bags.
Consumers can return their bags either in-store or by mail. To accommodate in-store returns, Returnity is installing take-back bins at retail sites nationwide. These In Rotation Boxes provide an easy, local recycling option.
If no participating retailer is nearby, consumers can make an online request for an In Rotation mailer to ship clean reusable bags back to Returnity. The mailer costs $20 and comes with a postage-paid return shipping label. Each mailer holds 10 to 20 reusable bags.
The mailer’s price covers all program costs, including mailer production, outbound and return shipping, and bag processing.
When Returnity receives shipments of bags from consumers or retailers, the bags are sorted and inspected. Intact bags with no tears or large stains are sent to partners for reuse.
According to the company, more than 90% of the bags it receives are still reusable. In Rotation bags reduce the number of new reusable bags Returnity’s partner organizations must buy, thus delivering financial and sustainability benefits.
Bags that are too damaged, dirty, or off-size for reuse are sorted by material type for further processing. That includes recycling of monomaterial bags and other recyclable flexibles.
How Kraiburg TPE Is Successfully Navigating a Rocky Business Environment
If you think the US economy is on the skids, you ought to take a look at Europe. As Rogé Karma writes in The Atlantic, “Over the course of 2023, the European economy saw close to zero growth. The continent’s two largest national economies — Germany and the UK — may both be in recession. Flagship European companies such as Volkswagen, Nokia, and UBS have collectively announced tens of thousands of layoffs.” Although a slight uptick is predicted for 2024, that grim reality overshadowed many of the press conferences held by European companies during NPE2024 in Orlando, FL, last month. A bit of an outlier in that regard was Kraiburg TPE. The supplier of thermoplastic elastomer compounds (TPEs) didn’t deny it faced challenges —?particularly as to how its customers plan to navigate this rocky business landscape —?the company projected a sunnier outlook than many of its peers. I sat down with CEO Oliver Zintner and Director of Sales and Marketing, Americas, Alberto Oba at the company’s booth on the NPE show floor to learn more.
Conservative planning pays off.
“The overall economic situation in Europe is quite challenging at the moment, but since the middle of last year, I can say that Kraiburg TPE is doing quite well,” Zintner told me. Business isn’t booming, he added, “but we are more or less meeting our budgets. Thanks to some conservative planning, we are seeing a little growth —?we are not sliding backward,” stressed Zintner, who succeeded Franz Hinterecker, a 23-year veteran of the company, as CEO in January 2022.
What does keep Zintner up at night, however, is wondering what the company’s primary customers —?many of them in automotive — are going to do in the coming years. “How much automotive business will remain in Europe? What will be the strategy of our established customers? Will car manufacturers like BMW and Mercedes go more into premium and manufacture fewer units? That might be a good business decision for them, but it may mean less business for us. The uncertainty goes on,” said Zintner.
While that sorts itself out, Kraiburg isn’t about to tap the brakes on developing innovative products for automotive OEMs. Just before NPE, it introduced EPDM adhesion compounds for automotive sealing and exteriors applications.
Compounds in comprehensive trial tests since 2023.
The compounds deliver adhesion, durability, and processability, and have been specifically formulated with UV resistance for automotive exterior parts, such as glass run channels and molded corner joints and end caps. They were developed in close cooperation with one of the most important global Tier 1 suppliers of automotive sealing products and have been tested in comprehensive trials since 2023, Kraiburg said in the announcement.
TPE-EPDM hybrid technology features constant EPDM adhesion quality at 23°C and 90°C heat aging, with dry surface appearance, said Kraiburg TPE. Flow properties are optimized to provide a broad processing window and increased design flexibility in part and tool design while maintaining high performance standards. Additionally, the compounds offer weathering resistance, color stability, low surface friction behavior, and wear and tear resistance.?
Market opportunities for medical-grade TPEs.
Kraiburg TPE also serves the medical device industry, especially with its Thermolast range of medical-grade TPEs, and that market isn’t subject to the up and down cycles of automotive. In fact, it’s quite healthy at the moment and is receptive to Kraiburg TPE’s portfolio, according to Zintner.
“We see steady growth in terms of the overall market, and we also see opportunities for our products, which can replace PVC in some applications,” said Zintner. He readily acknowledges that PVC is a good material with a long history of safe and effective use in the medical arena. It’s the plasticizers that are added to PVC that have raised some health concerns —?not the underlying material —?but in the public mind the nuance is lost, and PVC has an ongoing PR problem. Nevertheless, “if less PVC is used, well, this opens the door for other materials such as ours,” said Zintner.
The medical-grade TPE currently is only produced at Kraiburg’s plant in Germany, but the company is seeing growing demand for its products in the United States, especially in the diagnostics, syringe, and catheter spaces. Any thought of bringing production over here, since you have a plant near Atlanta, in Buford, GA, I asked.
“We decided some years ago that we would maintain one dedicated line in Germany, because our biggest customers are in Europe,” said Oba. “It is purely a cost question because of the special manufacturing requirements for medical applications. If it makes sense at some point, we could certainly transfer production to Atlanta.”
Sustainability a core competency.
Sustainability was a key part of Kraiburg TPE’s messaging at NPE. The company recently introduced sustainability as one of its core competencies, which is opportune as the European Green Deal , which has been called the world’s most ambitious climate plan, places new burdens on businesses. Without whitewashing the difficult choices the Green Deal poses, Zintner does see a silver lining.
“No one can sensibly argue against the need to be more sustainable. The ideas, in principle, are correct, but it’s the way in Europe that they are put into legislation that is really challenging. There are many requirements that industry needs to fulfill,” noted Zintner. That said, it is only a matter of time until similar rules and regulations are put in place in the Americas, he added. (In some states, notably California, one could argue that time has already come.) When that does happen, companies such as Kraiburg will be ahead of the curve, according to Zintner.
He found validation simply by walking the show floor. “Every second or third booth I see at NPE, it seems, is about recycling in one way or another. I didn’t really expect that, and it tells me that a sustainability mindset is already well on its way in the United States,” said Zintner.
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?? Covestro Collaborates with Automotive Partners on Car-to-Car Plastic Recycling: New joint program aims to establish closed-loop pathways for high-value plastics from end-of-life vehicles.
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Director de Operaciones-Producción- Operaciones en ambientes BANI- VUCA-QRM-Lean Manufacturing
5 个月Los mitos impiden avanzar en la dirección correcta y sólo emiten ruidos molestos que desenfocan del objetivo principal. Hay mucho que educar y preparar en la logística inversa del reciclaje pero, en estos momentos, no he visto la ocupación necesaria en los residuos industriales, tales como los que generan las redes, sólo lo que está haciendo Atando Cabos en Chile